This round of Eurobarometer surveys diverged from the Standard Eurobarometer measures and queried respondents on the following major areas of focus: (1) European Union policy and decision-making, (2) corruption, (3) civil justice, (4) e-communications, (5) agriculture, and (6) environmental protection. For the first major focus, European Union (EU) policy and decision-making, respondents were queried about whether more or less decision-making should take place at the EU level in regards to the f... (more info)

This round of Eurobarometer surveys diverged from the Standard Eurobarometer measures and queried respondents on the following major areas of focus: (1) European Union policy and decision-making, (2) corruption, (3) civil justice, (4) e-communications, (5) agriculture, and (6) environmental protection. For the first major focus, European Union (EU) policy and decision-making, respondents were queried about whether more or less decision-making should take place at the EU level in regards to the following topics: asylum and migration policy, exchange of police and judicial information between member states, the fight against drug abuse, the control of external borders of the EU, the fight against terrorism, and the promotion and protection of fundamental rights, including children's rights. Of these, respondents were asked which topics they thought should be the three priorities of the EU, which topics they felt well informed on, and which topics they would like to be better informed. For the second major focus, corruption, respondents were asked whether they agreed that corruption is a major problem in their country and a major problem in local, regional, national, and EU institutions. They also answered questions regarding how widespread they thought bribery and abuse of power were, if in the last 12 months they had been asked or expected to pay a bribe for services, whether they agreed that most corruption is caused by organized crime, and whose responsibility it is to prevent and fight corruption. For the third major focus, civil justice, respondents were asked if they had ever been involved in civil justice procedures in another EU member state, and what their opinion was about the ease of accessing civil justice outside of their own country. Respondents were also asked if additional measures should be taken to assist in access to civil justice in another EU member state, what their main concerns were about the procedures, and their preference for contract terms in purchasing products in other EU member states. In addition, respondents were queried about whether there should be uniform procedures in the EU for civil and commercial claims, if rulings made in one member state should freely apply in another member state, the main difficulties in enforcing rulings in another member state, if the EU should intervene in the enforcement of civil court rulings between member states, and the usefulness of having access to civil justice in another member state via the Internet. For the fourth major focus, e-communications, respondents provided information on the availability within their own households of each of the following communication systems: television, fixed telephone, mobile phones, and the Internet. Respondents were asked to identify reasons why they owned or did not own certain systems, including television, fixed/mobile phones, and telecommunication bundles, the accessibility of these systems in their household, their use of public payphones and telephone directories, and their knowledge of emergency service numbers. In addition, respondents assessed the performance of each system, shared their expectations as consumers, and rated the effectiveness of their service providers and available features of the systems (e.g., costs, tariffs, and flexibility with account changes). For the fifth major focus, agriculture, respondents shared their opinions about the importance of agriculture in the EU, their knowledge of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), whether they wanted more information about CAP, and from what sources they would gather that information. The survey also asked what should be the main priorities of the EU in terms of CAP, how well CAP fulfills its role, and what the main responsibilities of farmers should be. Respondents were further questioned in regard to the EU's reduction of the subsidy for farmers, what their opinions were about trade barriers, and whether the current amount of budgeting for agriculture was adequate. For the sixth major focus, environmental protection, queries included how important environmental protection was, what was meant by "the environment," what were the main environmental issues that worried them, how informed they felt about the environment, what issues they would like more information on, their main sources of environmental information, and who they trusted the most for information on environmental issues. In addition, respondents were queried about the best way to evaluate progress in environmental protection, the comparison of environmental protection versus economic competitiveness, personal efforts to protect the environment, what should be the priorities of citizens in daily life, and how environmental decisions should be made by government and by public authorities. Further questions included what the most effective way to tackle environmental problems should be, whether an EU civil protection force should be set up, and their opinions about the labeling of environmentally friendly products and the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Demographic and other background information includes age, gender, nationality, origin of birth (personal and parental), marital status, left-right political self-placement, occupation, age when stopped full-time education, household composition, ownership of other durable goods, Internet use, type and size of locality, region of residence, and language of interview (in select countries).

The original data collection was carried out by TNS Opinion and Social on the request of the European Commission.

The codebook and setup files for this collection contain characters with diacritical marks used in many European languages.

The setup files may contain references to Norway, but Norway was not a participant in this wave of Eurobarometer surveys. This collection contains no data for Norway.

The fieldwork dates in the data file for Bulgaria and Slovenia are not consistent with the fieldwork dates in the "Technical Specifications" section of the ICPSR
codebook. Also, the data indicate that all surveys were completed by January 16, 2008.

For questions QB5o, QC4o, QC8o, QD8o, QD12o, QE4ao, QE4bo, QE13o, QE14o, QF2o, QF13o, and QF14o, please refer to the "Appendix" section of the ICPSR codebook for country-specific response categories. This information is being released as provided by the data producer and has not been checked by ICPSR for discrepancies as compared to the data.

The title page to the questionnaire states "BASIC ENGLISH QUESTIONNAIRE"; however, it should read "BASIC BILINGUAL QUESTIONNAIRE".

Methodology

Sample:
Multistage national probability samples.

Weight:
Please review the "Archive Remarks" section of the ICPSR codebook for this Eurobarometer study.

Mode of Data Collection:
face-to-face interview

Extent of Processing: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of
disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major
statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to
these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Version(s)

Original ICPSR Release:2009-07-24

Version History:

2011-04-25 Data for all previously-embargoed variables are now available. The data have been further processed by GESIS. Separate documentation files in Excel file format comprising response categories by country for questions QB5o, QC4o, QC8o, QD8o, QD12o, QE4ao, QE4bo, QE13o, QE14o, QF2o, QF13o, and QF14o are no longer being made available. The SPSS, SAS, and Stata setup files, SPSS and Stata system files, SAS transport (CPORT) file, tab-delimited ASCII data file, and codebook have been updated.